Forgot to include
A pic from my Druid's game. It will look familiar to anyone who has played the BG or NWN games.
The biggest difference in the UI is that the character portraits for your party are the bottom left. When you click on a character's picture, it automatically brings up a line with their abilities, spells, and weapon sets above. That makes it easy for spellcasting and using special abilities. Like the older games, you can have several weapon sets, starting with two. That makes it easy to switch from something like a sword to a bow on the fly.
By default the game automatically pauses at the start of every combat, and you can pause at any time to issue orders to your individual party members. So just like with the older games. There is also a slow time option, that lets you keep the action going without pausing, just slower. But I think I prefer the old way of pausing best.
There are basic AI routines you can assign to your party members for them to do automatically, like attack everything, attack only those attacking you, etc... Just like in the old games.
The races are interesting. Besides the standard Human, Elf Dwarf, they have an aquatic race called Aumaua. They kind of are the orcs of the world, in that they are bigger and stronger than others. But not green or tusky. The Orlan are smaller, so might be similar to Hobbits or Gnomes. But they seem half-animal, with horns, fur and so on. I made my test Druid an Orlan. The Godlike are the most interesting new race. They seem to members of the normal races that have gained Divine mojo, which has altered them physically. They come in different flavors, like Nature Godlike, Death Godlike, Fire Godlike, and Moon Godlike. Each has their own special abilities.
Besides picking a race, when you create a character you also pick the Culture (not race) they came from. Basically it is the area they grew up in. Each confers a +1 bonus to a different Attribute, and determines what equipment you start with.
Then you pick a Background. Basically what you did. This gives you a bonus to one or two skills. Not all backgrounds are available in all Cultures.
You can change your character picture and voice at any time during the game. You can even use the voices of the opposite gender if you want. You can also change the primary and secondary colors of your character's gear at any time during the game.
The PoE Wiki is a handy place for all sorts of info on the game.
This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 29 2015, 04:07 PM